


The Future is (Almost) Now

by eli



Category: RPF - Mythbusters
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-12 13:53:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/125562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eli/pseuds/eli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The future is the present this week on Mythbusters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Future is (Almost) Now

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted for Missy Merlin for Yuletide 2008, [here](http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/69/thefuture.html)

**This special episode of _Mythbusters_ is brought to you commercial free, thanks to: **

NASA -- Making the future now for more than 40 years.

**

  


> _Electronic music rises while a model spaceship on a string swoops past the deep blue background, then back, then again, and again. The music comes to a static-grinding halt as the spaceship finally settles with a slight swing. Chalk stars are quickly drawn around the model, along with an entirely not-to-scale doodle of Saturn and its rings, before a TRON-like font spells out: SCIENCE...FACT?_

**

The three junior Mythbusters are gathered around their table in the studio in various shocking shades of shimmery fabric, with cardboard cutout versions of Adam and Jamie similarly decked out. Kari's outfit has shoulder pads. Tory's has a breastplate.

Grant is wearing silver tights, and raises an eyebrow at the entire scene before clearing his throat to tell the camera, "Now, we know what you're going to say..."

"This isn't the '80s?" Tory pipes up, poking at a pad until Kari slaps his hand away.

"Hands off, buddy. Don't think these aren't rigged," she warns. "And, no. That science fiction is _science fiction_ : it can't actually be tested, much less proven fact or...well, fiction."

"But, hey," Tory protests, "science fiction isn't so fictiony anymore! Adam and Jamie have built working hover cars and jet packs."  


> _Cue flashes of Jamie's hovercraft skimming along and capsizing in "Levitation Machine," and then sundry images to go with the roaring of machinery and Adam's cackling from three feet up during "Jet Pack."_

"True," Grant admits.

"And! We've tested..." Kari draws it out, eyes wide while the other two motion at her impatiently. She finally drops her voice and waves her hands spookily. " _Mind control_."

A startled frown from Tory. "No, we didn't."

Kari gives him a big grin. "In the name of science!"

Tory's back jerks up straight and his face goes blank, just like that.

Staring, Grant snaps his fingers in front of Tory's eyes, then his slack mouth. "Wow," he breathes. "What'd you do?"

Kari shrugs. "Played around a little the other day during lunch. Just to see if I could plant something as simple as a 'zone out' trigger when a subject is in a highly suggestible state."

"Huh. That's...amazingly handy."

Stonefaced-Tory reaches out and slaps Grant upside the head.

"Ow!"

Kari and Tory smile at Grant, singing together, "Busted!"

Grant rubs the ostensibly sore spot, muttering, "Like I was going to be able to tell the difference."  


> _Quick clips of every time Tory has ever been caught staring into space, with pretty much exactly the expression from a moment ago._

Tory crosses his arms with a distinct "hrmph." Kari doesn't muffle her snicker.

"Anyway," Grant says, making a great show of ignoring the both of them in favor of once again informing the camera, "while Adam and Jamie are off on a very secret _Mythbusters_ mission--"  


> _Film of Jamie calmly entering a room with a heavy door that's marked "VERY SECRET MYTHBUSTERS MISSION HQ," a big cardboard box in his arms. Adam clearly takes great pleasure in pointing to the sign -- a lot -- as he pulls the door shut behind them both._

"--we've been tasked with testing several _feasible_ television science fiction technologies."

Kari's hand shoots up. "Oh! Oh!"

"Humanvacuumdecompression."

Outraged, Kari turns on Tory, stamping her foot. "Awwwww, that was mine."

"Nope." Tory's high level of smugness gets an appreciative chuckle from Grant, which Tory plays off of by throwing one arm high and declaring, "Claimed in the name of--"

"Multi-phase laser guns!"

Tory gapes at Kari.

"Stun _and_ kill?" Grant exclaims.

Kari smirks, makes gun-finger hands and brings them together into a sweet _Charlie's Angels_ pose. "In the very same weapon." Then her hands spring apart to point at each guy. "Zap. Pow."

Tory grabs at his chest and goes wheeling out of shot. There's the sound of a metallic collision and a quiet groan, and Grant high-fives Kari.

**

 **So, the future is the present this week on _Mythbusters_ , and the team will be testing some of Hollywood's favorite science fiction accepted facts: that humans won't suffer a horrible death when left exposed in a vacuum for up to eight seconds, and that it is possible to have a single long-distance weapon that will provide both non-lethal and lethal force.**

In each of these tests, live subjects are not suggested.  


> _Back in their standard clothes, Grant cheers Kari on as she chases Tory around the build room with a water gun. At least, he's cheering until she turns on him and he ends up wiping his dripping face. That's when Tory grabs Kari from behind, and laughs as she shrieks when Grant snatches the gun and dumps its contents on her head._

**

 **Tory's project will take him back to the Marshall Space Flight Center at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, where the team tested three other vacuum-related myths.**   


> _Images of the waving flag, clear bootprint, and dropping feather and hammer from the NASA Moon Landing special._

"Okay, so." Tory sets the situation up for the camera, hands poised. "This myth is actually one from the viewers, and it's one that they've been arguing about it for years, it seems. We're going to be testing some very specific factors, though. One," he ticks off on a finger, "is how long humans can be in a vacuum without any protective clothing or equipment before something happens -- in sci-fi shows, it's been up to eight seconds, but first we've got to see if it can be done at all. And then there's Two," another finger and a wicked smile, "which is the real fun part."

 **No matter how long it turns out to take, the core of this myth is that humans will die if they are in a vacuum for an extended period. The method of death, according to many, is...violent.**

"Kerplewy!" Tory says with glee, hands flying out in a very clear demonstration of blood and guts going everywhere.

 **Yes. Spontaneous explosion or implosion. Which has the potential for making quite a mess.**

Tory's rubbing his hands together, and after a long enough pause for that to get really creepy, he cackles, "Time to build some humans," and lets out an Evil Overlord Laugh.

**

 **Kari and Grant, meanwhile, are going to be staying closer to home. And right now, they are tackling some more practical issues.**

"This myth has _so many_ elements to test!" Kari is almost vibrating with excitement.

Grant starts them off with: "Designing an effective long-distance, non-projectile weapon."

Kari nods. "Which, since we'll be testing this on dummies, will mean measuring the amount of force it takes for any 'ammunition' to either stun or kill. Also, to keep to the spirit of the science fiction, it should something that doesn't require contact between the shooter and the target. So, no taser-like weapons."

"But electricity is still a viable means," Grant points out. "Small doses are often used to temporarily disable, while high exposure can in fact kill."

"Yeah, and that's the fourth part: putting the ability stun and kill into the same weapon."

" _And_ getting them into a _handheld_ weapon." Grant shakes his head. "That's going to be the real design challenge."

"Well, there isn't going to be any designing until we know what we're designing for. So, what d'you think? List time?"

Grant perks up. "List time," he says with satisfaction.

 **There are many stun weapons in the arsenals of law enforcement around the world. They use almost everything under the sun to incapacitate their targets, including electricity, water, rubber, and sound waves.**   


> _Across the top of the screen has been written: "STUN" and "KILL," a simple two-column chart drawn beneath them. Each of the elements above gets scribbled up on the left side of the chart. "Bullets," "fire," "arrows," and "rocks" have also been filled in._

"Rocks?" Grant asks, eyebrows high.

"To the head!" Kari says, rapping her knuckles once against her skull, and then stumbling around in a circle as if dazed.

"These are going to be flying through the air, you know."

She raises her chin. "Air pressure, carefully calibrated to push the rock out of the barrel at a certain velocity depending on the desired result."

Grant blinks.

"It's worth a trial," she wheedles, fluttering her lashes at him.

He shakes his head, wordless.  


> _Back to the chart, where a tickmark appears next to "rocks" under both STUN and KILL._

"We already tried to make a water-powered stun gun, and couldn't do it in any kind of practical size," Gran says. "But that's the type of ammunnition that we're going to have to look at, because when it comes to the stun part, we want to put someone on the ground without lasting physical trauma. That eliminates a whole lot of these right off the top. Bullets, fire, and--" An ostentatiously loud throat-clearing off camera interrupts. Grant pauses, before saying, "And _arrows_ don't make the cut."

"And it has to be targeted, in both modes," Kari says, jumping back in to address the camera. "It doesn't do any good if you take out bystanders along with the subject."   


> _A number of options now have big squiggles through them, but there are some that have tickmarks in both columns._

Kari taps her finger against her ear. "Directed sound waves?"

"Sure," Grant says with a shrug. "Let's give that a shot."

"Oh, har-dee ha-ha."

**

 **While Grant and Kari start gathering materials for firing up some audio testing, there is a form of biological science happening in Dr. Bellecistein's land.**

"Normally, we can use a ballistics-gel torso, or even a pig, to simulate the reaction of a human body," Tory explains, standing in a smock over something that does look like it belongs in a castle dungeon's lab. "That won't work, this time. This simulate has to fully behave like a real live human, and that means breathing, pumping blood, blinking eyes, the works."

 **The team has already developed legs with veins --**   


> _We get the blood draining tub scene from "Shrinking Jeans," which morphs into Tory thumping a new set down on the table that he'd been standing over._

**\-- but that is a far cry from a full human replica.**

"This is going to take some time," Tory admits.

 **So, in the time-honored -- and saving -- Mythbusters tradition, let's go the easy route.**   


> _In fast-forward, with the appropriate music, Tory places a ribcage in a torso mould, and stuffs in two limp bits that turn out to be -- once he's attached a canister to them with small hose, and they inflate inside the bones -- thin plastic "lungs." He points to a switch, which attaches to the canister's release valve. When he flips it, the lungs deflate slightly, then inflate fully. Cut to him positioning everything very carefully, and then filling up the mould with ballistics gel.
> 
> Pink Panther-like music cuts in as we see someone with a dark hoodie pulled over his face (but who moves suspiciously like a certain robotics expert who has his own project to complete) theatrically sneaking up to put a metal head with empty eye sockets but blinking lids on the table behind Tory. He then disappears, much like a ninja would. Tory turns and puts his hands on his cheeks while mouthing something that looks like, "Oh my, wherever did that come from?"
> 
> The speed of the action picks up almost to a blur. Tory showing us a pair of pig eyes before placing them in the metal head is, thankfully, quickly gone. Then everything stops. An empty chair is in the middle of the room. In a nice edit, there's suddenly a blank-faced, sort of see-through figure sitting in there at a slight angle, blinking about every five seconds.
> 
> _

**The end result certainly isn't someone you'd want to introduce to the parents, but this breathing-Buster will stand up in a pinch. With a little help.**

Tory crowds up close to the camera, putting the newest Buster into very soft fade in the background. He whispers, "He'll look better with clothes on."

**

Kari sits on top of an incredibly large subwoofer, feet dangling. "It has been proven that animals and humans can use sound to deter, and even stun, a subject. Generally, humans have accomplished that by using sonic mines or grenades, spreading force over a wide area and pretty much affecting anything in their path."

"Now, sound waves _can_ be directed, since they bounce against physical barriers," Grant says, holding up a big white cone, like you'd use on an injured Newfoundland. He turns it around so that the small opening is pointed at Kari, and wiggles his fingers inside as if they were waves.

"The trouble is, the barriers dampen the strength of the sound waves." His finger wiggles get weaker and weaker, until he pulls his hand out. "This isn't much of a problem if you're in a concert hall or other enclosed space where you want to hear sounds without pain."

Kari starts humming Pachelbel's _Canon_ , swaying as her feet kick in time.

"But," Grant speaks up over her, "if you're going to direct a wave, or series of waves, that will be strong enough to impact a person, it's gotta have a heck of a lot of force coming out of the gate. Especially since air itself is a dampener."

"Testing _how much_ force we need...that's what this baby's for," Kari says with a smirk, patting the speaker beneath her.  


> _**WARNING:** SCIENCE CONTENT_

**Sounds are emitted at varying frequencies. A frequency is the number of oscillations per second of the sound waves, and is measured in Hertz (Hz). The force of a sound wave is measured in decibels (Db). The lower the frequency -- say, 5-10 Hz, instead of the standard of at least 25 Hz -- and the higher the decibel level, the more disruptive it should be to human physiology.**

"We've tried using sound to disrupt humans before," Grant says. "That didn't go quite to plan."

> _Headphones and diaper in place, Adam laughs in the face of the big bank of subwoofers in "Brown Note."_

"It still did have an effect, though, so we have an idea of where to start."  


> _Kari braces a rupture disc in a vise, while Grant sets up a metal tube two feet away, level with the rupture disc. The tube backs up against one cone, wide base against the subwoofer and small end sealed to the tube. There is another, smaller cone at the other end, its wide base sealed to the tube and the even smaller opening pointed at the disc._

"Setting up the barriers in this manner should produce a focused outlet for the sound waves," Kari explains, noise-cancelling headphones slung around her neck. "Starting at 120 decibels, which is the low range of where sound becomes painful to humans, we're going to gradually ramp up the decibels and lower the frequency, until the disc breaks. That will tell us exactly what we need to hit in order to knock out a standard adult human."

"Ready?" Grant asks loudly, headphones in place and big metal contraption on the table in front of him.

Kari nods, and moves back across the room to stand beside him as she places her headphones safely over her ears.

Grant counts, "Three, two, one," and flips the switch.

Kari hurries forward to inspect, but then makes a face. The disc is still very much intact.

Eyebrow raised, Grant turns up the dials, then puts his hand on the switch again and waits for Kari to return.

"Three, two, one."

Nothing. Again. And then again. Their faces settle into determined glares.

 **I guess we'll come back to this.**

**

Standing in front of the sign proclaiming his presence at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Tory slings an arm around Buster's shoulders.

"How about we go try to blow you up, buddy? How's that sound?" he asks. "Blink once for yes."

Now dressed, Buster does look better. He does not, however, look enthusiastic.

 **The vacuum chambers here at Marshall have served _Mythbusters_ well in the past. Buster will now have the distinction of being the first mythbuster to spend time in one while it is active. **   


> _Tory secures Buster to a vertical pole, allowing Buster to stand upright in the center of the room. He is hooked up to a number of machines that will continue to pump blood through his veins and air into his lungs, and he continues to blink. Once done, Tory gives Buster a cheery thumbs-up, and hightails it out of the chamber, the door closing to seal Buster in._

**Best of luck, Buster.**

Peering through the window, Tory grimaces. "I would never say this with Kari around, but, you know, I kinda feel bad for doing this." He slants a look at the camera. "Seriously, don't tell her that."

A buzzer sounds as the chamber is emptied. The monitors behind Tory for the machines hooked up to Buster show no change in their measurements. A vacuum is achieved, and Tory starts his stopwatch, counting along silently. At eight seconds, nothing has happened.

"Nine," Tory mouths. "Ten...eleven..."

He gets up to forty before calling a halt. Buster looks very much intact, although the blood is no longer flowing at anything like a rate that would be called normal.

"I really hate to say this," Tory says while someone enters the chamber behind him, "but it looks like the thing that would actually kill Buster is lack of oxygen." He sighs, a slightly lost expression on his face. Then he straightens and shrugs. "We'll just have to make him hold his breath."

 **As scuba divers have learned, holding your breath while going from an area of low pressure to high pressure, or vice versa, is not advisable. Gases compress and expand; body tissue does not. Your body has air throughout, but as the pressure changes, the large volume of air in your lungs will be affected to a greater extent, and--**

"Ow," Tory says, wincing at the monitor for Buster's lungs, which is going out of control. "Yeah, that'll leave a mark."  


> _A red balloon with a black smiley face drawn on it floats in the middle of the screen. It gets bigger, and bigger, and, of course, explodes. No longer hidden behind it is a big, red-splattered "BUSTED."_

**

 **Grant and Kari have also finally achieved success of a sort.**

Kari holds up a ruptured disc, a crazy look in her eyes. Grant points mutely to the insane numbers on the dials that indicate the lengths to which they had to go, and then to the four subwoofers and tubes they now have lined up with the vise that had been holding the disc.

"And that's just for stun." Kari drops the disc on a table and crosses her arms. "I'm gonna call this one."

"I wish I could say otherwise, but, yeah," Grant agrees. "There's no way we're getting this down to portable dimensions. And while there are other means we could try..."

"I'll throw a rock at your head," Kari warns him.

Grant holds up both hands. "Nothing else is any more likely to be a handheld weapon anytime soon. This is plausible...but not probable at this time."

Kari smiles sweetly at the camera. "Give us a couple years."  


> _With a crash of white noise, a subwoofer falls out of the sky and lands none too gently on a padded mat. The camera swings around for a bird's-eye view, and the words "PLAUSIBLE...IN THE FUTURE" can be made out on the subwoofer's top._

**

"So, what have we learned?" Tory asks the re-assembled group.

"That spacing someone wouldn't be anywhere near as much fun as it should be?" Kari offers.

Grant snorts, trying to hold back a laugh.

"Well, yeah, but also that this..." With a flourish, Tory pulls out a _Star Trek_ -style phaser. "Is still only tv and movie magic." He points it at his Buster, who's propped up against the mess of parts behind them, and fires.

The plastic gun makes a sad electronic noise. Buster blinks.


End file.
